


Just One Look

by stalrua



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Erwin is Armin's dad, M/M, No animals were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 10:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15628860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stalrua/pseuds/stalrua
Summary: "Um... Armin, what are you doing?"Armin briefly glanced up from his phone.  "Hey, Dad.  We're making a sacrifice to the gods.  You know, so all of Eren's deepest darkest dreams come true."  Beside him, Eren flashed his most winning smile.For the prompt: "No ritualistic sacrifice in the pool, kids."





	Just One Look

**Author's Note:**

> First fic for a new fandom. I can only sit on the sidelines and lovingly admire other people’s works for so long before I have to chime in. Figured tumblr prompts were as good a place to start as any. Get my own feel for the characters before diving into something more complex. As if I need to start something new.

Eren drifted over to the edge of the pool, rested his chin on his crossed arms, and sighed.  Why did life have to be full of difficult choices?  Including a toilet with the outdoor shower would’ve made perfect sense.  Slap up a few walls and voila!  An easy out for those times when trekking into the house was too dangerous.  But _no_ , Armin’s dad had to make things difficult.  It probably would have interfered with the landscaping’s aesthetic, or the ambiance during one of his get-togethers, or the phases of the moon.  _I was going for tropical paradise, but nothing compliments hibiscus quite like a toilet._ That left Eren draped onto the rock border, staring at the group of people under the gazebo, torn.

On one hand, he really needed to piss.

On the other, he didn’t have the nerve to walk through said group in his current… well, predicament.

He really needed to reapply his sunscreen too.  He could literally feel himself baking under the mid-afternoon sun by this point, but the bottle was conveniently sitting in one of the chairs’ cup holders.  Retrieving it would involve getting even closer than if he went to the bathroom, possibly eye contact, maybe even talking.  Yeah, definitely a hard pass on that.  Second-degree burns couldn’t be that bad.

If only his thoughts could’ve chosen the high road for once instead of the gutter and his dick wasn’t always so eager to rise to the occasion.  Or, you know, the source of all these problems would just _put on a fucking shirt_.

“Ok, this is getting embarrassing.”

Eren’s head flopped to the side, focus never straying from the dark-haired man sprawled out on one of the lounge chairs.  “Hm?”

“Actually no, scratch that.  It’s creepy.”

The man tucked an arm behind his head, which only served to accent the results of his exercise routine and give an unobstructed view of the tribal tattoo cascading down his ribcage.  Lean fingers curled against the bristles of his undercut, and Eren’s own fingers twitched in response.  “What is?” he asked absently.  God, there was his happy trail disappearing beneath the waistband of his board shorts.  What he wouldn’t give to—

“You!  You’re not even trying to be discreet anymore.”

“I’m not?”

Armin tugged on his arm, trying to draw him back to the game.  “Eren, if you don’t stop ogling my dad’s friends, I’m going to stop inviting you over.”

“Friend.  Singular.  As in, just the one.  That one.  The one.”

“What is this, The Matrix?  You’re so weird.  Consider yourself officially uninvited from now on.”  When Eren continued to resist, Armin released him with a groan and splashed him instead.  “Look, I know you’ve had this thing for Levi forever, but don’t you think it’s time to face the music?”

Chin propped in one hand, Eren watched as Levi snorted at someone’s comment and proceeded to toss an orange repeatedly into the air.  The corner of his mouth was still curled with the hint of a smirk.  How cute.

“All I want is for him to notice me.  To see that I’m not just that kid who threw up all over his shoes the first time we met.”

Armin nodded sagely.  “That was so iconic.  A spectacular first impression.  Your aim couldn’t have been better if you tried.”

Eren’s brow pinched at the memory, but he did his best to brush it aside.  Fucking Zeke with his fucking whisky.  “I’m eighteen now.  I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Yeah, and Levi’s what… twelve years older than you?”

“Doesn’t matter," he said, determined.  Under the gazebo, Levi launched the orange at a petite redhead who gamely caught it, then laced his fingers beneath his head and closed his eyes.  Dappled sunlight played across his features, and Eren’s heart ached in an unexplainable way.  “Just one chance.  That’s all it’ll take.”

“One chance, huh?”  Armin sidled up to the edge of the pool.  “That’s pretty confident coming from someone who can’t even get out of the pool right now.”

Eren jerked to attention so quickly that he scraped his elbows against the rock and banged his knee on the wall, but before he could manage anything more than a mortified _Seriously, Armin?!_ , a volleyball collided with his temple with a wet smack.

“Incoming!”

Wincing, he rubbed his head while Armin hopped out of the pool to retrieve the ball.  “What the hell, Jean?" he grumbled.  "Pretty sure you’re supposed to say that before it hits me.”

“Heh, my bad.”  Eren glared at Jean’s smug, distinctly not-sorry expression.

“Dude, stop mooning and get your ass back in here," Connie called out.  He'd crawled partway up the opposite side of the volleyball net and now swayed back and forth.  “Ymir bailed, so we need a hitter.”

“What about Armin?”

“Too short.”

“Wow, thanks," Armin deadpanned, tossing the ball to Mikasa and slipping back into the water.  “I’ll remember that next time you need help in calculus.”

Connie looked genuinely distraught.  “But we’re starting limits next week!”

“The only limit you need to understand is your brain capacity," Jean said as he shoved Connie off the net.  “Let’s go, Jaeger!”

Realizing he wouldn’t be able to get out of the game any longer, Eren cast one more lingering look in Levi’s direction before moving out towards the deeper end. 

“Try not to let it get to you," Armin said.  "We’re graduating in a couple months.  We’ll be going off to college, and things will change.  You’ll find someone else.  I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you will.  Things will get better, you just have to let them.”

“I suppose.”  Eren rubbed the back of his neck.  “It’s stupid, really.  I’ve done everything short of begging, and nothing’s worked.  You’re probably right.  He’ll only ever see me as a kid.”

“There are quite a few cultures that still sacrifice animals to the gods.”

Grim as it sounded, Eren couldn’t help but smile.  “Okay, I’ve done everything short of begging and an animal sacrifice.”  Then he paused.  “Hold on," he said, and Armin shot him a wary look.  “What if we—”

“No.”

“Wait, Armin, just hear me out.”

“No.”

“Don’t you have cats?”

“Yes, but the answer’s still no.”

“You don’t even _like_ them.”

“We are not sacrificing Sonny and Bean for the sake of your nonexistent love life.”

Eren frowned.  “You’re right, it would be too suspicious.  How about…”  He trailed off, gaze settling on something floating at the far end of the pool.  “Hey, Historia!”

A small figure gradually untangled herself from Ymir who was clearly unhappy to be interrupted, adjusted her bikini top, and peeked out from behind the neck of a giant flamingo float.  At least someone was getting lucky.  “Yes?”

“We need your float.”

 

* * *

 

“Ok, now for the head.”

“Jean, let me see the scissors.”

“What do I do with the wings?”

“Just lay them over there for now.”

“No, not like that!”

“What?”

“Not you, Sasha.  Eren, you have to pinch it.”

“Pinch it?”

“Yeah, like this.”

“Why can’t we use the scissors?”

“The website specifically says the head has to be pinched off.”

“It’s a deflated plastic flamingo, Armin.  I don’t think we’re strictly following tradition here.”

“Um…”  Standing at the edge of the pool, Erwin stared down at the group of teenagers methodically dismembering what used to be a perfectly good pool float.  “Armin, what are you doing?”

Armin briefly glanced up from his phone.  “Hey, Dad.  We’re making a sacrifice to the gods.  You know, so all of Eren’s deepest darkest dreams come true.”  Beside him, Eren flashed his most winning smile.

A bespectacled figure popped up out of nowhere beside Erwin.  “Nice!  Don’t forget to drain the blood on the altar before you burn the carcass.”

“Thanks, Hange!"

“Is it…”  Erwin shot them an incredulous look.  “Are you really encouraging this?”

Hange merely shrugged.  “Kids will be kids.  And if they’re going to go through the trouble of making a sacrifice, they might as well do it right.”

“Finished!" Eren declared.  "That’s the last of it.”  Tossing the scissors onto the poolside, he proudly held up the remains of the flamingo head.  It looked kind of sad, what with the way it dangled limply from his hands, but he supposed it would do.  “Now we just need a fire.”

“Give me a second.  I think we have some tiki torches in the garage," Armin said, hopping out of the water.

“Oh no you don’t…”  Erwin snagged his son as he tried to slip by and purposefully steered him back towards the pool, massaging his temples with his free hand as he went.  “I can’t believe these words are actually coming out of my mouth, but there is to be no ritualistic sacrifice in the pool, kids.”

There was a collective sigh of disappointment among the teenagers.  Even Hange seemed to wilt, though that was somewhat less surprising given the bizarre experiments Erwin had witnessed at their house.  He honestly didn’t like being the bad guy – he liked to think of himself as the _Cool Dad_ – but part of parenting involved setting boundaries and animal sacrifices, real or not, seemed like a reasonable thing to prohibit.

Leaving his dad behind, Armin jumped back into the pool, waded over to Eren, and clasped his shoulder.  “Well, you can’t say we didn’t try.”

“Yeah," Eren mumbled.  He laid out the flamingo head and watched it ripple with the shallow waves.  “Guess it’s just not meant to be.”

Looking back, it was kind of funny, in an ironic sort of way.  That was often the way things worked, though.  A series of wonderfully ironic events.  Because if Connie and Sasha hadn’t rearranged some of the pool chairs to make room for their dance off and Reiner hadn’t dropped his backpack in the middle of the walkway and the rocks weren’t wet from Armin getting out of the pool and Erwin hadn’t come over to investigate, nothing might have ever happened.

But as it was, they did.

So when Erwin turned to walk through the maze of chairs, he ran straight into an approaching Levi who proceeded to trip backwards over Reiner’s backpack, slip on the wet rocks, and fall into the pool right in front of Eren.

Levi righted himself with a furious scowl, swiping the water from his face and slicking his hair back.  A stunned Eren stood there quietly, not at all admiring the exact shade of his eyes or the way the water dripped down the contours of his chest.

“Erwin, you clumsy piece of shit," Levi grouched.  "My phone was in my pocket and everything.”

Hange squatted beside the pool, miserably failing at holding in their laughter.  “You okay, Levi?”

“I will be when Erwin buys me a new phone.  Here.”  He fished out the ruined device and tossed it to Hange.  “I guess you’ll be handling Monday’s meeting on your own, Erwin, since I’ve lost all my calendar appointments.  On second thought, maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing.  Now I don’t have to play nice with— what the fuck?”  Levi pushed away the decapitated flamingo that had floated into view.  “Fucking River Styx in the pool.”

Lunging forward, Eren grabbed what remained of the float.  “Sorry, that’s… uh, mine.”

“I don’t even want to know.”  Levi made his way back to the edge of the pool but paused before he could climb out.  He glanced back over his shoulder, gaze narrowed, arm draped over the rocks.  And then he did something that had only ever happened in Eren’s fantasies: his attention dipped to briefly – and was that appreciatively? – scan Eren’s body.  He cocked his head slightly.  “Eren, right?” he asked.

Not quite trusting himself to speak, Eren offered a hesitant smile and nodded.

“Huh.  You’ve grown up.”  The corner of his mouth quirked.  “Not bad.”  Then he hefted himself up and over the side.

Levi didn’t say anything else, just snatched the towel from an apologetic Erwin, but he did spare one last look before retreating indoors to change.  As for Eren… he was still frozen in place, heart racing a mile a minute, something triumphant roaring in his chest.  The remains of their sacrifice floated off towards one of the filters, forgotten.  Only after all the adults were gone did Connie whoop and slap Jean on the back.

“Holy shit, it worked!  Who’s got another flamingo?”


End file.
